Helping Farmers

February 06, 1987|By R.C. Caldwell.

GLEN ELLYN — We taxpayers should try once more to prove that democracy works by having Congress allot the $30 billion farm subsidy cost to the one million bankrupt or destitute farmers. We owe it to them. Our bureaucrats have mismanaged the farmers for a half-century while we passively observed.

The average farm family should be able to live on $30,000 per year. Each family can keep its farm and raise whatever it wants; lease the land or let it lie fallow. Those farmers who gambled and lost by mortgaging their land to buy more may continue their rugged entrepreneurship by getting into some other business.

The many farmers who believe they could do well with the government ``off their back`` should be given a grace period of three years to prove their point. If they have failed in that time, they may then accept the $30,000. But, as the Ryder ad says, ``no pets``; in other words, no more subsidies, price supports or any other ``gimmicks.`` The $30,000 subsidy would continue for 10 years.

In a free market we taxpayers will be in this position:

1) If all the one million accept the offer, our cash outlay will be the same--$30 billion--but we will have created a million new taxpayers.

2) We will pay less for our food.

3) We will have struck a mighty blow for private enterprise.

4) We will save on the salaries of thousands of agricultural department workers.

5) Undoubtedly there will be a considerable percentage of the farmers who will not want the $30,000. The savings of the first 10 percent, or $3 billion, should be spent to send the billions of bushels of stored grain to the world`s starving.

6) Additional savings should--by law--be credited to the national debt.

7) Conscious of the dislocations, we can nevertheless comfort ourselves that we have tried to be fair and made an effort to rectify our past mistakes.